How does your last year look?

Last night I was having dinner with a friend and we were reflecting on our past year.  She mentioned that she wasn’t really in the holiday mood and was pretty much looking forward to 2012 being over.   She told me that she started off last year dating a new guy, moving into a new apartment and excited about her job.  But she is ending the year not dating anyone, frustrated at her noisy neighbors and overworked and underpaid at her job.   When you look at your life in such a way as that I guess she had a point.

Which led me to think about my past year…(if this were a sitcom I would insert some music and make the screen fuzzy to insinuate time travel)….

At this time last year I was starting a new job that WAY underpaid me (but it was a job so I took it!), living with my son at my parents’ house, driving a car that didn’t belong to me (thanks Mom and Dad!) and probably not dating anyone (Ok, sorry about  not know this last fact, but I truly don’t remember my relationship status, which leads me to believe no one of value was in my life at the time).

So here I am in a job that pays well (thank you holiday bonus!), driving a new car I pay for, living in a house I rent and still not dating anyone of mention… If you compare apples to apples, or oranges to oranges, or whatever the heck you want to compare my past year was pretty good!

But I digress… while discussing our success and/or failure of 2012 my friend and I came up with as Oprah would say an “AHA! Moment.”   Basically I think you can determine your attitude about yourself and your past year if you measure it against a goal.  Last year about this time my only goals were to pay my bills and not fight with my mom over turning lights on and off in the house – she is a consistent “Turn the lights off” person and I tend to be a “leave a light on for someone” person.  As you may imagine our lighting philosophies tended to lead to some royal battles.   So I started this year with reasonably attainable goals.  Once I started accomplishing these little goals I was able to really start enjoying my year; new job!  New friends! New travels! New dates! A few bad dates! (Ok, they get explanation points too because, let’s be real, my dating life is HILARIOUS at times) and on and on my list went with new things.

I decided last night that my goal in life (at this moment) is to be a good mom.  Really, simply, that is it.  I have a job that allows me to put my Little Man first.  I have friends who know my son is my priority and I only will date people who understand that as well.  Sure, my long term goals will be to retire wealthy, buy a beach house and travel to Europe.  Of course my professional goals are to get promoted, be recognized as a leader and contribute to our society.  However, for 2013 my one simple goal is to be a good mom and I am happy to say that I am 100% committed to the task. 

As for my friend?   I am not yet sure what her 2013 goals are but I may suggest finding a new place to live as her neighbors really are noisy!

Get STRONG not Skinny

This past week I was listening to Anne Hathaway talk to Matt Lauer about her role in Batman.  She told him the directors of the movie asked her to “get strong, not skinny”.  I love that message!  It is so simple, yet one that I needed to hear.   And I’m assuming most of my bloggity blog readers may need to hear as well.

I can’t tell you how many times I talk to my coworkers, friends and family about getting skinny, losing weight and fitting in to clothing that is a size too small.  Each day I commiserate with friends about putting on extra pounds, making bad choices and being out of shape.  We all know what to do, we all know how to fix our dilemma, yet for one reason or another choose not to do it.

When I heard Anne (cause you know we are buds, so I can refer to here as Anne) talk about getting strong and how great she felt kicking and fighting during the action scenes I felt a twinge of jealousy.  I want to be strong! I want to be able to kick and fight like a guy. 

True confession – I did take a boxing class once. I did ok, but when it came to the kicking part, my girly girl came out. In my past life as a cheerleader I perfected the pointed-toe long-leg high-kick. My tootsies can face the stars and my legs will stay straight as an arrow.  This is perfection for dancing and yoga, not the same effect at the boxing gym.  I kicked like a girl!  I told my boxing coach I jumped and kicked like a girl.  He didn’t understand… From my perspective, I kicked to be pretty, I kicked to have great form, I kicked to look good and be liked. 

After hearing Anne, I want to kick to kick some butt too!  I want to be strong and stand up to that darn punching bag and kick the crap out of it and look tough doing it.

I am not saying that I will be tough overnight, nor am I saying that I will ever be Anne’s version of Cat Woman.  However, now I realize that instead of being skinny, I want to be strong. Instead of focusing on pointed toes and straight legs I want to focus on muscle and where my legs will take me.  I am sure that I will still revert back to being a girly girl and worry that my form isn’t perfect, but in the meantime I am going to focus on bringing strength to my life and seeing where my new self will go!

Spa Day

There is nothing more relaxing than a day at the spa.  Right?

Thanks to Living Social (a coupon site that offers extreme discounts on things – if you haven’t check them out – do so now!) my girlfriends and I found ourselves spending the day at a resort and spa. We took advantage of every ounce of discounted spa goodness, arriving at 9:00 a.m. for our 3:00 p.m. appointments.   Some say we are crazy – I say we were dedicated to the sport of relaxation.  We happily started our staycation with a beachfront tiki hut, followed by fruity cocktails and yummy lunch.  We napped, we swam, we tanned, and we relaxed.  

As any good spa-goer knows, you need to start off with a niece steam to relax your muscles.  I spent a few minutes in the steam room, then joined the girls on the lounge chairs with our waters and champagne awaiting my first treatment – a massage.

I’m not one to talk during a massage, pedicure, wax, what have you. I find it a bit awkward and would prefer to drift into the happy place; somewhere between sleep and consciousness where no one is really bothering you and your mind is just kind of jelly.  Apparently my masseuse didn’t get the memo.  She was chatty.  To make things worse her accent was very strong and we spent the first ten minutes with her saying something, me saying a muffled “what?”, face down with my head in that holder thingy, her repeating herself, me muffling  a “what?” her repeating herself and me finally me just saying ‘k’. I figured the “k” was a universal answer, basically covered any question/answer conversation.

 Somewhere during the back and forth it came out that I have lower back pain (actually diagnosed as a S.I. joint that pops out, really, I was NOT about to get technical with my new friend).  My dear masseuse was very sympathetic and decided to put hot towels on the painful area.  Perfect! Thank you.  She then decided each time the towel cooled, she would remind me that she was putting a new towel on and would insist that each night I would do the same.  ‘K’ got it. I said. Over, and over, and over again.  We did the towel reminder/ “k” about 20 times during the 60 minutes I was laying there. 

All was good; we got into a rhythm, her talking about towels, me drifting in and out of my conscious “k” when she got to my legs.  Before you ask – yes my legs were shaved! Geese!

 Apparently, I have spider veins.  They’ve never been a big deal, don’t hurt and quite frankly are much better looking than most members of my family’s veins so I never worried about them.  Not so for this chic.  She screeched! She stopped.  She halted my relaxing mojo to insist that I don’t get my legs too hot, no hot tubs, no hot showers (SHIT! I’m thinking, I just steamed for like 20 minutes, am I going to need an ambulance to the ER?) 

“K”, “K”, “K” I repeat over and over again. Yes I will be careful with my legs. Yes, only cold showers. Yes, I won’t sit too long, I won’t stand too long, I won’t cross my legs too much.  I’ll agree to anything to get her to stop talking about my veins.  This is my day of relaxation and my clock is ticking and now I am brainstorming all the ways I can hide spider veins.

The massage ends, I thank her, take my glass of champagne and head to the relaxation zone with my girlfriends.  Unfortunately my spider veins and bad back have made an impression on this poor soul.  She follows me out to the lobby area, insists on telling me again, loudly about how to cure my broken body.  People turn, whisper, give me strange looks.  Now, all of that stress and worry that she was supposed to massage away is back – I’m showing my friends my legs, worried about back pain and staying far far away from anything steamy. 

One of my girlfriends called the other day, turns out Living Social ran a special on Sunday - $500 worth of spider vein removal for $99.  I might just have to try that….